Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Pedagogical Agent

1. Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Pedagogical Agent 報 告 人：張純瑋 Kim, M. & Ryu, J. (2003). Meta-analysis of the effectiveness of pedagogical agent. In Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2003 (pp. 479-486). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

2. Introduction (1) • pedagogical agents as a promising solution of providing highly interactive communication between learners and computer. • to investigate how the quality of agents’ image affects learners’ performance and/or attitude by using lifelike agents(Atkinson, Merrill, & Patterson, 2002; Lester, Towns, & FitzGerald, 1999; Moreno, Mayer, & Lester, 2000). • examined animation effects in pedagogical agents(Baylor & Ryu, In press; Craig, Gholson, & Driscoll, 2002; Johnson, Rickel, & Lester, 2000). • researchers have studies in different knowledge domains from affective to cognitive skills(Atkinson et al., 2002; Johnson, 2001; Lester et al., 1997; Moreno, Mayer, Spires, & Lester, 2001).

3. Introduction (2) • the effects of pedagogical agents seem to have promise for education. • facilitate interactive communication between human learners and computers in learning environments. • provide contextualized instruction, help increasing learners’ motivation, and/or enhance problem-solving skills. • there is no clear distinction of what factors of pedagogical agent have more impact on learning in either the affective or cognitive domains. • Dehn & Mulken’s review focused just on human computer interaction of agents in general (not on pedagogical agent) (only covered to 1998). • This study was to summarize the empirical studies conducted to evaluate the effect of pedagogical agents.

4. Conceptual framework(Definition of pedagogical agnet) • For the purpose of the present meta-analysis, the following definition for pedagogical agent was formulated: • a software entity (regardless of whether it has visual or auditory feature) that carries out some set of operations on behalf of a user or another program with some degree of independence or autonomy, and it employs some knowledge or representation of the user’s pedagogical goals and desires.

5. 3. Method • Data Filtering: by using 28 recent pedagogical agent studies remained through data filtering, common variables were found. • Independent variables: presence of agent (agent or no agent), image effect (presence or absence), voice effect (narration or text), and animation effect (presence or absence) • Dependent variables: affective (persona effect) and cognitive (retention & transfer test) domain. • Grouping comparisons were used for estimating average effect size with 6 studies exactly fitted to the frame of variables.

6. Independent and dependent variables in 6 studies

7. Value of effect xize

8. Summary • Presence of Agent always yielded significant effect size across the dependent variables, Retention, Transfer, and Persona. • there is a strong effect of using Agentfor educational settings. • the presence of agent Voice also has a strong effect across the dependent variables. • providing voice or narration would have a greater effect than providing text only. • the presence of agent image positively affects Persona. • but it was not significant in learning outcome. • Animation effect was evaluated as a non-significant effect size across the dependent variables.

9. Suggestions • a great variety of agent sin different knowledge domain is needed • It is important to overcome the methodological shortcomings of many existing studies such as too few subjects, repeated measure • they should take more fine-grained perspective on the effect of employing pedagogical agents on the user’s motivation and cognition • further investigation of cultural difference in agent based learning is desirable. • more deep interviewsor follow up questionnaires are recommended. • further exploration of long-term effect of agent based learning environment should be carried out. • almost no work on considering the characteristics of the learner has been conducted.

10. End Thank you